The Day Neil Peart Played His First Show With Rush

After Neil Peart became Rush's new drummer in late July 1974, the band wasted no time putting him to work: The group played their first show with him on Aug. 14, 1974 in Pittsburgh.

Contrary to popular belief, this wasn’t Rush’s first show in America. The band was part of a poorly attended spring 1974 festival at the North Side Drive-In theater in East Lansing, Mich., and also opened for ZZ Top in Cleveland in June 1974. But the concert did take place in front of a huge crowd: 12,000 people at the Civic Arena, according to contemporary reviews.

“It was really kind of a scary thing, opening up with a new person in the band in front of so many people,” Geddy Lee recalled during a rare October 1974 interview recorded in Dallas. He also noted the show was "kind of a freakout.”

This Pittsburgh concert was a short, low-key opening slot for Manfred Mann's Earth Band and Uriah Heep. (The trio isn’t even listed on an ad promoting the show.) The band reportedly opened with “Finding My Way.” Poor-quality audio of the song doesn’t seem to betray the band’s nerves, although it does give a nice snapshot of Lee’s astonishing vocal range and Peart’s already-ferocious style.

Reviews were mixed, according to scans hosted on the Rush fan site Power Windows. A Pittsburgh Press writer stressed that the city prefers “heavy, slam-bang rock,” and so seemed to approve of the set: “Somebody must have wised up the opening acts, too, because that’s all Rush, a promising Canadian trio, offered,” before specifically praising “Working Man.”

The Valley News Dispatch was less enthused, and simply noted that Rush “rocked in the preliminary.”

The Pittsburgh show served as the kickoff for a months-long North American tour that also found Rush opening for Kiss, Blue Oyster Cult and Hawkwind. Effectively, it also started the band on a transformative, 40 years-plus journey.

“Among the many memories of that life-changing experience, I would never forget standing on the floor beside stage left while Uriah Heep played 'Stealin','” Peart recalled in Roadshow: Landscape with Drums: A Concert Tour by Motorcycle. “The big dark building, colored lights on the heroic figures up on the stage, the roaring audience, the sheet electricity in that place. Halfway through their show, the retractable dome of the Civic Arena had peeled back, open to the summer night."